Today’s Layout
A bit about me…
Ph.D. in Statistics from Montana State University
“Supporting Data-Intensive Environmental Science Research: Data Science Skills for Scientific Practitioners of Statistics”
Land Acknowledgement
Duhram sits on the territory of several Native nations, including the Tutelo and Saponi speaking peoples. We acknowledge, respect, and thank the tribes on whose stolen land we are guests.
Indigenous people are not relics of the past. We who work and live here must acknowledge past violence and ongoing harm produced by the ongoing effects of colonization.
Qualitative Research
“Qualitative researchers strive to understand the meaning people have constructed about their world and their experiences.” (Merriam 2002)
“Qualitative research is an effort to understand situations in their uniqueness as part of a particular context and the interactions there. This understanding is an end in itself.” (Patton 1990)
What are the principles of qualitative research?
The researcher is the primary instrument for data collection and data analysis
The analysis seeks to find emerging themes
The product of a qualitative study is richly descriptive
How might this look?
Sample Selection
Select a sample from which the most can be learned!
Data Collection
Major sources of data – interviews, observations, documents
Data Analysis
Compares units of data to find common patterns across the data
Investigating Student Learning through Code
Warm-up (90 seconds)
How would you describe the action(s) being taken in this statement?
A framework for analyzing student’s code (Schulte 2008)
| Text Surface | Program Execution | Function | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Macrostructure | Understanding the overall structure of the program | Understanding the “algorithm” of the program | Understanding the goal / purpose of the program (in its context) |
| Relations | References between blocks, e.g., method calls, object creation | Sequence of method calls, object sequence diagrams | Understanding how sub-goals are related to goals, how function is achieved by subfunctions |
| Blocks | Regions of interest (ROI) that syntactically or semantically build a unit | Operation of a block, a method, or a ROI (as a sequence of statements) | Function of a block, may be seen as a sub-goal |
| Atoms | Language elements | Operation of a statement | Function of a statement, only understandable in context |
Coding student’s code
Descriptive Code
“Filters a vector of values using extraction operator, based on an equality relation with a variable selected from dataframe using
$operator”
In-vivo Code
“Uses
[ ]and==to filter vector, uses$to select variable”
How could this be used?
Learning Trajectory
How does a student’s concept model of a dataset inform how they filter data?
Program Environment
How do the visualizations produced by students who learn ggplot differ from those who learn “base” R?
Linguistic Structure
How do the “evocative names” given to tidyverse functions impact learners’ mental models of what the function accomplishes?
Why is this important for data science education?
How can we distinguish merely interesting learning from effective learning (Wiggins and McTighe 2005)?
Investigating Power in the Classroom
Another Warm-up 🙃
Read through the dialogue on the back page of the handout. Cfonsider how students are using language to:
Discourse Analysis is the study of language (structure, form, and syntax) together with the study of “language-in-use… [where we study] language in terms of actual utterances or sentences in speech or writing in specific contexts of speaking and hearing or writing and reading… Discourse allows us to create and enact our identities” (Gee 2014, 19–20).
Language is used to build:
How do students use language and actions to (1) establish a collaborative environment, and (2) position each other’s thinking as significant while working in small groups on mathematical problem-solving tasks?
“The more one talks and the less one listens, the more likely it is that one’s viewpoint will function as if it were community consensus even if it is not” (Montell 2019).
“Fights over who gets to speak and whose words are recognized are indicative of power and status” (Johnson, 2002)
The Influence Framework (Engle, Langer-Osuna, and McKinney de Royston 2014)
the negotiated merit of each participant’s arguments
each participant’s intellectual authority
each participant’s access to the conversational floor
each participant’s degree of spatial privilege
What can qualitative research teach us about oral exams?
Questions?